Political shakeup in Israel

NICK EICHER, HOST: Next up: a political shakeup in Israel.

Israel’s parliament approved a new coalition government on Sunday. That ended Benjamin Netanyahu’s 12-year tenure as the country’s prime minister. It also ended two years of political gridlock. But analysts warn this new era of cooperation might be short-lived.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Joining us now to help explain why is Jonathan Schanzer. He is the senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Jonathan, welcome back!

JONATHAN SCHANZER, GUEST: Thank you.

REICHARD: This is a very diverse coalition, made up of eight political parties! I’d like to start by asking you to put that in perspective for a U.S. audience. If this was happening in Washington, who would this new government include?

SCHANZER: Yeah, the equivalent in Washington would be something along the lines of a party led by Donald Trump, a party led by Bernie Sanders, as well as a party led by Joe Biden, and maybe throw in Rand Paul there as well. This is really a cocktail of parties that really don't agree with one another about almost anything. The one thing that really did seem to bind them was their desire to remove Benjamin Netanyahu from power. So I think they all banded together with the very clear objective of just removing the man who had sat at the top for—in their view—far too long.

REICHARD: The man at the top of this new government is Naftali Bennett. Tell us a little bit about him and his political position.

SCHANZER: Sure, Bennett actually has had a fairly successful career as a warfighter in the IDF. He also has made a fair amount of money over the years in the high tech sector. He was one of the people that Netanyahu had groomed early on in his political career. The two of them ultimately, obviously, began to be at odds with one another. Now, Bennett, I would say, is actually probably further to the right than Netanyahu is. He is a religious Jew. I think this is actually the first prime minister who will wear a kippah head covering. No other prime minister before him has been as religious as he has. And he's a friend of the settler movement. He's opposed to Palestinian statehood. He's deeply opposed to the Iran nuclear deal. He’s as right wing as probably anybody could be in that position. But what's really interesting is that he has entered into a deal with Yair Lapid, who is a center left politician whose views on these issues are maybe not diametrically opposed, but they are really seen as opposites by the Israeli public.

REICHARD: This coalition has a very narrow majority. If just one party backs out, it would topple the government. And given its diversity, there’s not a lot of agreement on some really critical issues. So I’d like to get your take on likely policy positions, starting with Israel’s relationship with the United States. How will this new government affect that?

SCHANZER: Well, I don't think the policies are going to be terribly different from Netanyahu’s policies. I think what will be interesting, though, is to have a new face, representing the Israeli government. As you probably recall, Netanyahu did not have the best relationship with the Obama administration and that has been recalled by the Biden team, many of whom served under Obama. So there was some tension there. It'll be very interesting to see whether Bennett is more warmly welcomed. Of course, that remains to be seen.

REICHARD: New leader Naphtali Bennett as you mentioned is a religious Jew, in favor of settlement. What about the Palestinian question? Do you foresee any change from Israel in that realm?

SCHANZER: Look, I think that right now, the Israelis would rather leave that alone. Obviously, the recent war in Gaza probably put it on the front burner a little bit more. But at the end of the day, you have a really difficult situation with Hamas controlling the Gaza Strip. So there's really nothing that Israel can do on that front. In other words, this is a terrorist organization that's not interested in negotiating. So that removes one out of the two Palestinian territories from negotiation. In the West Bank, you have a more pragmatic government, but there you have the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas. He is now 16 years into a four year term. I don't believe that Bennett will willingly enter into negotiations with the Palestinians unless there was a new leader. And I think even then he would be dragged kicking and screaming into those negotiations, given that they are not likely to bear fruit anytime soon.

REICHARD: How about with Israel’s stance against Iran and other hostile nations in the region?

SCHANZER: So it was interesting, but Bennett spoke before the Knesset—Israel's legislature—on Sunday. And when going through the foreign policy objectives of this new government, he made it very clear that he was not going to allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon. The Israelis cannot tell the United States what to do. But the Israelis have made it clear to the U.S.—specifically Biden administration officials—that they are going to pursue what Israeli analysts call the War Between Wars. And this has been a quiet shadow campaign that the Israelis have engaged in over the last couple of years where they have been striking Iranian assets in Syria with impunity, and preventing the smuggling of certain weapons or technology across the region. The Israelis have also been targeting Iranian warships in the Persian Gulf and in other spots around the Middle East. They have launched a cyber campaign to undermine Iranian assets in the country, as well as we believe potentially targets against drone factories and other military assets. And so I don't really see a significant departure from this. It will undoubtedly stoke some tensions between Israel and Washington. But at the end of the day, both countries are sovereign, and they can pursue their own foreign policies and I expect that there will be two different tracks taken, while the U.S. continues to probe the Iranians for the potential to enter back into that deeply flawed nuclear deal.

REICHARD: And finally, I’d like to ask about the Abraham Accords, the peace deals Israel signed last year with several Arab nations. Do you think this new government might encourage other countries to sign on?

SCHANZER: I think they certainly will. You know, I think the real question really is whether the Bennett government, this government that's just been formed, whether the Arab states believe it has staying power, whether it's going to stick around. In other words, these countries are all run by autocrats and these autocrats appreciated the fact that Netanyahu had been in power for 12 years. He sort of reminded them of themselves. I think the key here, by the way, is for the Israelis to convey that it's not the leadership that matters, but the system. And the system will honor these agreements. And that's what I hope the Israelis will emphasize in the discussions to come.

REICHARD: Jonathan Schanzer is an expert on Israel and the Middle East with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Thanks so much for joining us today!

SCHANZER: Thank you.

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